A tell-all biography written by Yasser Usman, titled “Rekha The Untold Story“, has been published by Juggernaut. The book reveals lot of explosive revelations have been made about different incidents and episodes of actress Rekha’s’ life.
FORCED SMOOCH & MOLESTATION
Rekha alleged that she was physically molested during the shoot of her first film Anjana Safar. In what was not informed to Rekha, the director and the film’s lead actor Biswajeet Chatterjee had it planned. Without letting Rekha know, Biswajeet suddenly smooched her in the scene all of a sudden and that went on for almost 5 minutes.
Assault at Vinod Mehra’s mom’s hands:
Many people are aware that Rekha secretly married Vinod Mehra in Calcutta. Although the couple tried to keep things under control back home, Vinod’s mother was furious at his decision of marrying Rekha. The book reveals that his mom didn’t allow Rekha to enter their house and almost physically assaulted her with a chappal.
Mukesh Agarwal’s suicide:
Rekha shocked the nation when she announced that she had got married to Mukesh Agarwal. But the marriage didn’t survive for long and Mukesh committed suicide. He hung himself with Rekha’s dupatta around his neck. Nationwide, Rekha was called names and made to be a national vamp.Mukesh’s family and friends held Rekha responsible for his death and even accused Rekha of being involved with her secretary Farzana.
Surprisingly, director-producer Subhash Ghai also gave his piece of mind and attacked Rekha. The Karz director reportedly said, “Rekha has put such a blot on the face of the film industry that it’ll be difficult to wash it away easily. I think after this any respectable family will think twice before accepting any actress as their bahoo.”
He didn’t stop there. He added, “It’s going to be tough even professionally for her. No conscientious director will work with her ever again. How will the audience accept her asBharat ki nari or insaf ki devi?”
Anupam Kher, Rekha’s co-star in many films around that time joined the chorus. He said, “She’s become the national vamp. Professionally and personally, I think it’s curtains for her. I mean I don’t know how will I react to her if I come face to face with her.”
The off screen Silsila had caused a crack in the Amitabh-Jaya relationship too. Reports suggest that Jaya had even barred Big B from acting with Rekha. In an interview with Stadust magazine in 1978, Rekha had made some shocking and explosive revelations about her love affair with Mr Bachchan. She targeted Jaya who she felt was responsible for Big B’s decision of never working with her again. “At an award function some time ago, I’d recited a few lines. Everyone imagined they were meant for him. But actually, it was for her,” said Rekha. She recited the lines in the interview: “I looked at you, you turned your face away. Why? You feel you are badly off, but can’t you see my position is worse? There is deep hurt in your gaze, but can’t you see that the wounds in my heart are deeper than your look?” She also mentioned how she got to know of Jaya’s angst. Rekha had revealed, “Once I was looking at the whole [Bachchan] family through the projection room when they came to see the trial show of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. Jaya was sitting in the front row and he and his parents were in the row behind her. They couldn’t see her as clearly as I could. And during our love scenes, I could see tears pouring down her face. A week later [after the trial show of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar], everybody in the industry was telling me that he has made it clear to his producers that he was not going to work with me. Everybody else informed me about it but he didn’t say a word on the subject. When I tried to question him about it, he said, ‘I am not going to say a word. Don’t ask me about it’.”
The sindoor drama:
n a certain portion in the book, the writer has revealed how Rekha shocked everyone at the Rishi Kapoor-Neetu Singh wedding by wearing sindoor on her forehead. The guests and the media couldn’t stop wondering if Rekha had got secretly married. At the same party, Rekha went up to Big B and started chatting with him which left Jaya Bachchan fuming.
The biography traces the transformation of Bhanurekha Ganesan into one of Hindi cinema’s most enigmatic stars. The love child of actress Pushpavalli and Tamil movie star Gemini Ganesan, Rekha started off her career at the age of 14 in small roles in Kannada and Tamil films. Her first Hindi film was Anjana Safar with Biswajeet in 1969, directed by Raja Nawathe and produced by Kuljeet Pal. A kiss between Biswajeet and Rekha, filmed without her knowledge and shot while “unit members were whistling and cheering” for the five minutes that Biswajeet forced himself on the teenage actress, earned her the adjective that is doubled-edged in an industry that is known for its double standards: “bold.”
Usman dispassionately traces Rekha’s many misadventures in Hindi films in the 1970s and ’80s. She displayed poor judgement in her choices and paid little attention to her appearance, costumes, and acting. Actor Navin Nischol, who was making his debut in Sawan Badhon with Rekha in Mohan Sehgal’s Sawan Badhon in 1970, reportedly called her a namoona[character] and kaali-kalooti [dark and ugly]”.
The svelte and oomph-oozing actress with the neatly plucked eyebrows, the right amount of make-up, the perfectly chosen costumes, the cultivated hauteur and the perfectly modulated smoky voice first peeked through in 1976. In Dulal Guha’s Do Anjaane, Rekha appeared with Amitabh Bachchan for the first time, and her role as a two-timing wife earned her rare praise. Film World noted, “From a plump, pelvis-jerking, cleavage-flashing temptress, she has metamorphosed into a sleek, accomplished actress. Gone are most of the inane mannerisms, pouts, wiggles and giggles.”
As Rekha’s stock grew, her colourful private life blossomed, and of all the link-ups, her alleged affair with Bachchan remains the best known. Rekha’s on-screen chemistry with the lanky actor, who dominated the latter half of the ’70s, resulted in several well-known films, including Mr Natwarlal (1979) and Silsila (1981). Meanwhile, rumours swirled about their relationship, fuelled by regular gnomic statements by Rekha that made it to the covers of film magazines.
In her famous interview on Rendezvous with Simi Garewal in 2004, Rekha said, ‘Standing in front of Mr Amitabh Bachchan is not easy.’ She revealed that she was paranoid the moment she found out that Amitabh had been signed for Do Anjaane. The entire film industry was raving about his intense portrayal of the Angry Young Man in Deewar.Remembering that time, Rekha said that she was extremely nervous throughout the shoot of Do Anjaane. She light-heartedly recalled how she used to forget her lines out of nervousness and how one day, Amitabh told her in his baritone, ‘Suniye…zara dialogue yaad kar lijiyega.’
— ‘Rekha The Untold Story’.
One of the challenges of writing about stars from the ’70s and ’80s is that the primary source of research is the film magazine. The gossip items, interviews, glamorous photo spreads and reports from movie sets give us vital glimpses into the workings of the film industry, but this kind of reportage is not always analytical. It is difficult to reach into the inner life of a movie star based on interviews designed to perpetuate a public persona. Usman had to take care to ensure that his book did not reproduce the chatty, nudge-wink quality of the numerous back issues that he referred to during the course of his research.
“The danger of using these cover stories is that it might go into the gossipy biography zone,” Usman said. One such book on Rekha has already been published, the scurrilous out-of-print Eurekha! by Mohan Deep. “I didn’t follow stories that were too scandalous, and I stuck to her interviews and her voice,” Usman said. “I picked up the bits where she was revealing her emotions. I also removed the bits that readers would consider juicy and scandalous, even though they might have been in her own voice. I aimed for a graceful account and a balanced journalist account.”
They might seem frivolous and non-academic, but the magazines at least give a vivid picture of film culture in the ’70s and ’80s, Usman added. “It will be very difficult to write a biography or a history of Bollywood based on the current lot,” he said. “The conversations in these magazines are heartfelt and speak of the access that journalists had to the stars. The kind of cover stories that Stardust and Super did simply cannot happen in an age where everything is about promotion and you are told in advance about the kind of questions you should be asking.”
Bachchan, predictably, features prominently in Usman’s narrative despite repeated disclaimers in several chapters that the movie star has either refused to respond to or denied any connections with Rekha. There is the flashback to Rekha’s sensational entry into the wedding of Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh with sindoor in her hair, leading to rumours that she had secretly married Bachchan. There is also the jaw-dropping casting of Bachchan, Badhuri and Rekha in a love triangle in Yash Chopra’s Silsila, which appeared to mirror their collective off-screen status.
Usman is not sure if some of the current silence surrounding Rekha has anything to do with the film industry’s continuing veneration of Bachchan. “Nobody told me that they would not talk about Rekha because of Amitabh Bachchan, even off the record,” Usman asserted. The filmmakers who did agree to be on the record include those who gave Rekha some of her dignified roles, including Muzaffar Ali, who directed Rekha in Umrao Jaan (1981) and Shyam Benegal, who cast her in Kalyug(1981). Apart from discussing Rekha’s contributions to Umrao Jaan, Ali bluntly told Usman that Bachchan should have married Rekha.
Muzaffar was Rekha’s director in Umrao Jaan, perhaps the role Rekha will be best remembered for by generations to come. While making the film, Muzaffar Ali got a close look into Rekha’s life. He described her as ‘a very sensitive woman’. According to him, ‘She became a walking corpse. The fault is entirely Amitabh’s. He used to come and sit on our sets during the Delhi shooting of Umrao Jaan. That’s a fact. Whenever referring to Amitabh, she always spoke using inko, inhone, like women do who consider themselves married. I think she considered herself married.’
Unlike many of Rekha and Amitabh’s colleagues in the film industry, Muzaffar Ali was not cagey. He was direct and unequivocal: ‘She is and she was in love with him. He should have definitely given her an identity. Amitabh should have married her.’
— ‘Rekha The Untold Story’.
Would the book have been different if Usman had managed to interview Rekha? He met her once years ago, at a red carpet event. “Had I spoken to her, it would have been a better book,” Usman said. “I wasn’t able to do the psychological profile like in the Rajesh Khanna book. There are many angles I could not probe because I could not find someone to talk about those phases of her life. It would have been good to get her version, but I doubt that she would have said anything. I realised that until 1990, she was outspoken and would take names, but after the suicide, the tone changed considerably.”
Had Rekha opened up about her eventful life, the book would have reflected the changes in her personality, Usman added. “Thought processes change, people change and they move on, and I wanted the voice that shows incredible struggle and a dramatic makeover towards the end. I didn’t want to force a feminist angle on the book either, but the impression I came away with is that she is a simple woman who refused to accept defeat. I am not saying that she is a role model, but she was honest about everything and Bollywood tried to tame her.”
